Brazil
by Lydia Bell
Summary: A moment out of time: groggy and confused, but getting clearer. Post-"Always." Slightly AU/jossed, since it doesn't really go with what we see in "After the Storm." OTOH, I think it works nicely with the deleted scene. :)


He wakes up ... well, he's not sure when. It was dark when they'd gone to bed and it's every bit as dark now, so not dawn yet, but other than that he's completely temporally lost.

They'd separated while they slept – it was too hot to stay entangled – but she's here, curled up on her side, one arm under her head and the other extended toward him. Reaching for him, he likes to think, but then he's given up trying to figure out when she's reaching for him and when she'll pull away.

She told him over and over that she wants him, and he believes her. She wouldn't be the first person to have a near-death epiphany. She wouldn't be the first to retreat from it once the adrenaline had subsided, either.

She's not cruel, not on purpose, but he's not sure she's as ready for this as she thinks she is either.

The brain may be confused but the body wants what it wants, and he's getting hard again looking at her. He thinks about waking her up, but he doesn't really know if they do that.

She settles the question for him when she stirs, then moans. And not the fun kind, either. Nightmare? But no, she's sitting up now, slowly and gingerly.

She's hurt.

He never asked what _I almost died_ meant.

She'd set the pace earlier, slow and sweet and it had been so, so good but now he wonders if there was a reason things didn't get more ... vigorous. Shit, what _happened_? "Are you OK?"

She nods, because of _course_ she does. He feels sick. Don't do this, Kate.

"Do you want something? I have some painkillers in the medicine cabinet."

She whispers, "Yeah," and he slides out of bed and heads for his bathroom. Everybody knows you're not supposed to keep medicine in the bathroom but he's too lazy to go any further when he's sick. He's glad to not have to go any further from her now. He grabs a few bottles, heads back.

"I didn't know what you wanted, so I brought everything I had," he explains, handing over the bottles. Water, she'll need water. Well, he would. Maybe she takes pills dry. She tries not to let anyone see when she's sick or hurt. There's a glass on his night table from yesterday, so he grabs it and takes it back into the bathroom. She can drink out of his glass, right? They have that kind of relationship now.

When he comes back with the water, she's using his phone as a flashlight, studying the label on one of the bottles. Ah yes, the good stuff.

She holds up the bottle. "What happened?"

"Root canal," he says, wincing with the memory.

She nods. "Good. I mean – nothing to worry about." She hadn't known, of course. Why would he tell her that, of all things, about last summer?

"No." He hands her the water and slides in next to her, watches her take one of the Percocet and consider a second one before setting the bottle and glass down. How much pain is she in? How close did she come?

"Are you OK?" He whispers it this time.

"Yeah." She settles back down onto her pillow. His pillow, actually, with Kate Beckett's head on it. That's taking some getting used to. "He beat the hell out of me, but I'll be fine."

"Are you sure?" She could have internal bleeding. A ruptured spleen. "You said you almost ..." He forms the word but can't speak it; it's a dry pocket of air in his mouth.

She shakes her head. "Not from getting beat up. We were fighting on a roof, I went over the edge. But I was able to hold on until Ryan found me."

He doesn't understand. Ryan found her? Did she go up against Maddox alone? Are the boys OK? They're probably OK – she would have said something. Fuck, a roof?

"And the thing is, Castle, I wasn't scared that I would die without ever catching my mom's killer." She looks up at the ceiling. "I've spent so much time in therapy, trying to accept that it's OK for me to have a life that's about something other than her murder. And then I was going to die before I actually lived it."

"Kate ..." He wants to hold her but he doesn't want to hurt her, so he just opens his arms and is relieved when she nestles against him. He closes his eyes, taking in her scent, her warmth, the feel of her skin against his. "You're going to get to live it. You're going to have a great life."

"Yeah," she whispers. "I think I am."

He needs to remember to buy Ryan a house or something.

_He got away, and I didn't care._He believes her. But whether or not she cares anymore, they still do. The man who almost killed her today won't stop coming because she's had a change of heart. Maybe they should get out of town for a while.

"We should go somewhere," he suggests. "Just relax for a couple of weeks, get away from everything."

"Mmmm, yeah," she says. She sounds sleepy. "That's actually one of the things I talked about with my therapist. He's been trying to get me to think about things I want to do outside of work. Classes I might want to take, hobbies, travel, stuff like that. I've got a bunch of websites about Brazil bookmarked."

"Brazil, huh? Any particular reason?" They have some great nude beaches in Brazil.

"It's - I don't know. I've never been there, never been anywhere near." She laughs, and he physically can't help but smile. "I think it's because it's about as far as you can possibly get from Russia. I mean, don't get me wrong, I loved Russia! But ... I just want to do something completely different."

He's always wondered, why Russia? She'd been eleven when the USSR broke up, he realizes. Nine when the Berlin Wall fell. He remembers being 21, hunkered down in the Old Haunt, writing _A Rose for Everafter_. He'd overheard people talking about the Wall, but had no idea what had actually happened until he came up for air two weeks and eight chapters later. Kate had been in grade school then, both of her parents alive and well, with no idea what would come crashing down on her before the decade was out.

It was so unlikely that they'd met. So impossible that they'd ended up here. He's never written anything so improbable as them.

"So were you planning on going alone?" OK, yes, he's fishing, and it's obvious, but he doesn't really care. This year _sucked_.

She ducks her head, but he thinks he saw a smile on her face. "That's, um. Not really the way I pictured it, no."

She's been making plans for her future. That include him. And it's not even that he's surprised, not exactly, but the confirmation knocks the breath out of him. He actually coughs. He's suave that way.

She chuckles and takes his hand, laces her fingers between his.

"I know it seems sudden, me coming here tonight, but I've been working on it for a long time. Wanting it. I just ... I had a lot of stuff to figure out."

"I know." He can accept that. He's pathetically grateful to accept it. He just wishes he'd known, that's all.

But then, who is he to complain about secrets? _I wake up sometimes and I think to myself, 'how the hell am I still alive?'_ she'd said. _It's like I'm just waiting for that other shoe to drop._ She'd been safe for a year and she'd never known. Sure, he'd known, he'd felt better, but she'd walked around for a year never knowing if today was the day they came for her and didn't miss. He thinks of her on the sniper case, how she'd heard a siren and hit the deck. He has no idea how she doesn't do that every day of her life. How she gets up every morning and leaves the apartment and faces killers and is never scared and carries this, all the time.

Jesus, Kate.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," he blurts out.

She squints at him. "For what?"

"I ..." But it's too big, he has no idea how to even start. "I'll take you to Brazil," is what comes out. "I'll take you anywhere. I own property on the moon."

She laughs again. How is she so happy? Doesn't she know she almost died? Doesn't she know that everything they've screwed up for the last year is just sleeping, that she shouldn't laugh too loudly or she might wake it?

"Let's start with Brazil," she murmurs.

He has thirteen different internet-capable devices in this apartment; he could have tickets in five minutes. But he just can't quite muster up the will to get out of bed. Not with Kate Beckett lying next to him. She's naked and drowsy from the Percocet and so vulnerable ... and yet she's here, not hiding away.

He's pretty sure she'll be here tomorrow. It can wait.

"It's a deal," he says, and kisses her one last time before following her into sleep.


End file.
